Sailing For Sunrise
by Wolfychann
Summary: Left without a ship or a crew after Barbossa's mutiny, Jack Sparrow heads east for jolly old England... and some old friends.
1. Tortuga

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Sailing For The Sunrise

"That's not much, matey," the filthy old rumrunner said to me as I offered him all the currency I had--the golden rings from my ears, the ones a pirate wears to pay for his funeral when he falls in battle. "Especially considering how much of my wares you've managed to pour down your gullet in three days. But I'm a fair man. Throw in the gun and we've got ourselves a deal."

No. I would have sold him my body to get off that horrible little island, or a year of my servitude, I would have sold him my legs if that's what was necessary. But the pistol was mine. From the instant I'd woken up in my cabin with the bastard Barbossa's sword at my throat and the crew laughing all around me, I'd known exactly what I was going to do with my pistol and its single mercy bullet. It wasn't a very merciful plan, but there's few crimes worse than mutiny. And I would have my revenge, no matter how long it took. I wasn't going to sell my revenge for a few leagues' passage on a leaky old skiff.

"Sorry, mate," I said. "The pistol's not for sale. If you don't fancy my offer, I suppose I'll just die here. After tossing the gold far out to sea, of course."

The greasy-haired old man scowled at me and snatched the earrings out of my hand. "I can take you as far as Tortuga."

"That's just where I want to go. Much obliged," I said with a little bow.

Not long after, I was on the dock in Tortuga, my earrings back in my ears and twenty shillings in my pockets. Along with a nice flask of rum. Really, if the man had the ballocks to be rude to me when I was in a desperate situation _and_ to fall asleep on the way to Tortuga... well, I could hardly be blamed. Besides, I needed it much more than he did. He wouldn't starve, he still had his boat and nearly all his cargo. I had no such security.

But I had Tortuga! The streets of Tortuga were mother to me, and the ruckus of her taverns was father, and the folk brother and sister and wife. Tortuga, whose lovely stench I would lick from the very crevices of her cobblestones if I dared. Tortuga, onto whose shores a prim and proper English cartographer named John Sparrow had staggered one night five years before, and died. Tortuga, who had taken the dust from that corpse's bones and breathed life into them, my life, the life of a pirate.

Well it was night again, and I was staggering a little, and in a way I was dying again. Fortunately, rebirth in Tortuga came easy, cheap, and frequently included with the price of a room. I walked to the Squirrel and Duck, my old hideaway, sat myself down in a relatively quiet corner of the room, slapped down my money, and had a hot meal and a good drink in short order. The usual wild rumpus was going on, but I tried to ignore it and just duck anything that happened to fly in my direction.

A plate of fish and potatoes and two beers later, I slumped down onto the table, not sure if I was exhausted, sad, or furious. Here I was, thirty years old, a captain, and I had no ship, a mutinous crew, nearly no money, and nowhere to go. Except upstairs. After a bit of frantic searching and stepping over people in various states of sottenness, I found the innkeeper. "Sam! Sam, I'm staying for the night. You have a room empty?"

Sam was a big man who always managed to look relaxed even when his inn was being pulled down around him, which it was most nights. "Aye. You'll be wanting to see Lucy?"

"No, mate, not tonight. Someone I don't know."

"Aye." Sam turned and picked a girl out of the crowd with his eye. "Selena! Accompany this gentleman to his room."

She was short and pale, with long black hair, and she was far too young for her sort of work. But she had a fetching little smile on her face as she pocketed my payment, took my arm, and led me upstairs. The rest of her was rather fetching as well.

She even kissed me on the mouth. She'd really have to learn not to do that.

Afterwards, I was left alone, naked, and in only slightly better spirits. It had been fine while it lasted, but now the memory of her touch was fading so quickly I could hardly remember if anything had happened. Sitting on the bed, I had a few swigs of rum and my mind started working, fast. I couldn't stay in Tortuga. If Barbossa or any of my--his--men found out I was alive, they'd remedy that situation. So I had to move, and be gone within a matter of days, and not come back for years. Best to get out of the Caribbean altogether. Not many pirate crews sailed for Europe, so I'd have to stow away. Or...

Suddenly a plan sprung, fully-formed, from my mind. It was at once beautifully simple and unbelievably audacious. It would either kill me, or deliver me to England in very short order and with no effort. Or both.

In the morning, I immediately set about putting my plan in action. With what remained of my funds, I bought myself passage on a ship carrying a cargo of cotton and wool to Port Royal. Two days later, in Port Royal, I went directly from the dock to the Navy fort and presented myself to the guards with my hands up. "I am Captain Jack Sparrow," I said, "and I wish to surrender."

They didn't move. "Eh?" one of the soldiers asked. "Who are you and what are you talking about?" He must have been new.

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow," I repeated, much more slowly so there'd be no misunderstanding. "The most feared pirate captain in the Caribbean, terror of the Spanish Main? And I'm surrendering to you."

"Oh. Well, right then. Go on and do that."

"I _am_." Lord, was I going to have to beat him over the head, break into the armory, clap myself in irons, and throw myself in the gaol? "If I threatened you," I said, drawing my pistol, "would that speed things up?"

The guard nearly jumped back. He really was too young for his post. Boy didn't even have a full beard coming in yet. "That would do it, yes. You'll be putting that away, now, right?"

"Just arrest me," I growled, holstering the gun. Finally, _finally_, he sent his partner for a magistrate, who arrested me in short order. However, another problem arose.

"Jack Sparrow," he intoned once he had me in irons, "you have been accused of... threatening a soldier of the Royal Navy. For that, you face the sentence of ten lashes in the public square and a fine of ten shillings. Do you have anything to say in your defence?"

God's blood. This was no good. I was a pirate captain! Didn't my crimes merit deportation to England to stand trial? They did it for Captain Kidd. Brought him across and hanged him, and for hardly half the crimes I'd committed in my day.

"I'm a pirate!" I exclaimed. "My crimes are much more awesome than that. I pillage, I plunder, I rifle and loot. I extort, I pilfer, I filch and sack. I maraud and embezzle and even hijack! Don't I deserve more than a few lashes and a fine?"

The magistrate turned to one of the soldiers, looking concerned. "Fetch the Commodore," he said. "Port Royal doesn't have a sanitarium. If he's mad, there's nothing to do but ship him out to London." It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but it would do.

And that's how I finally managed to get myself in the brig of a ship of the Royal Navy, clapped in irons, and heading for London. I wished I'd known earlier how difficult it would be.


	2. Dear Brother Freddy

The journey took more than a month. More than a month of sitting in the stinking brig of the Navy ship _Endeavour_, without women, without rum, without sunlight, without sea spray, without freedom. And with every day of it I hated Hector Barbossa a little more. But I kept myself busy, in a way. I had a knife, a small one, that I'd hidden away in my boot and no one had noticed. So every day, I'd scrape away at the hull of the boat from the inside. Just a bit. I didn't want it breaking straight through if a storm came up.

The knife went utterly dull of course, but over the course of forty days I managed to wear a good portion of the hull down until it was thin as parchment. Then, finally, the _Endeavour _arrived in Erith Reach, on the outskirts of London, and there dropped anchor. As soon as I had an idea of where we were, I took action.

I started in the back of my little cell, and rushed forward with all my might, putting my shoulder first. The thinned wood splintered and creaked, but didn't break. I thought I might, though--my shoulder smarted terribly. One more try, the other shoulder this time. It worked. The wood broke and I fell through, heading head-first for the water from quite a height.

I managed to turn my fall into a passable dive, and hit the water without killing myself. Though I half wished I had--it was cold! I wasn't in the Caribbean any more. It chilled me down to my bones, but I swam as best I could and, for lack of anything else to do, reached the shore.

The bank, actually, because I was well down the Thames, nearly within London proper. And this was no deserted sandy beach; there was a road along the bank, busy with traffic that slowed a bit when I crawled out of the river. People stopped and stared, but that was no problem of mine. I shook myself off and started walking down the side of the road. I knew where I was going. I might be thousands of miles from home without a penny to my name, but no man's poor as long as long as he has his family. It was time to pay a long-awaited visit to that older brother of mine.

__

Dr. Fredrick C. Sparrow, Surgeon, read the plate on the door. Terribly intimidating. Well, I was glad to see at least one of us had made Mother proud. It was where his old house had been, though it was just an office now; I reckoned his current house would be something disgustingly grand. I went up and knocked on the door.

A woman answered, looking a bit nervous at the sight of me. I suppose I just have that effect on women. "What's your business here, sir?" she asked, clearly hoping for an excuse to shut the door in my face.

"Could you kindly tell Doctor Sparrow that his brother's here to see him?"

She shut the door. There was quite a long wait, and then out burst my big brother Freddy. He was a grown man now, very neatly dressed, a wig on his head, a bit heavy but impeccably well scrubbed. "Johnny!" he exclaimed, the very image of joy and surprise, his arms thrown wide to embrace me. Then he got a good look at me, standing there soaking wet, in filthy rags, my hair long and tangled a thousand times over, gold rings in my ears and beads in my beard. His arms fell back to his sides. "John? Is that you? What the blazes has happened to you?"

"Long story, Freddy boy. Can I come in?"

He paused, looking me up and down as if to see if I bore any resemblance to the man I used to be. It was, admittedly, unlikely. "Of course, of course, I'm sorry, terribly rude of me, come on in, John."

The office was as unbearably stuffy within as the plate on the door had suggested. Everything was white and clean and in perfect order. You'd hardly suspect that he was digging out bladder stones and amputating limbs in the back room; the front, at least, looked more like a barrister's office than any doctor's that I'd seen. But it made perfect sense, if Freddy ran the place. Freddy had always been a nervous and fussy child, never wanting to get himself dirty, never interested in adventures or running wild. While I was committing acts of petty larceny, he was playing marbles; while I was learning to kiss girls, he was reading books. A wasted life if you ask me, but I wasn't there to judge. I was there to mooch.

Freddy embraced me then, a bit gingerly, and I hugged him back the way a man ought to hug the brother he hasn't seen in nearly six years, with great claps on the back that made him yelp ever so slightly.

"John," he said when I released him, "where have you been? We didn't know if you were alive or dead. I had to talk Mother out of holding a funeral for you. But you're..." he looked me up and down once again, then smiled. "You look almost like a pirate."

So very tempting to tell him the truth, but discretion first. "I imagine I might. It's been a rough couple of years. The truth is, I was on the ship _Courageous,_ charting some of the minor isles near Jamaica,when we were attacked and defeated by pirates. I was taken prisoner." That part was true. But I didn't tell dear Freddy how I had escaped their clutches in Tortuga and become a pirate myself.

"I lost everything," I went on. "Without my instruments and books, cartography was hopeless, and there's little employment for an educated man in the Caribbean. It's a very different world there. So I became a merchant sailor, one of the unwashed and uncouth, out of desperation. I saved what little I could, yet it took me five years--five agonising years--of backbreaking work before I could afford passage home. But now I'm here, and everything can be well again. Say... how's Mother?" Father had passed away not long before I departed for the Caribbean.

"Well enough," Freddy said. "Though if she sees you in this state she won't be. We've got to clean you up and get you some fresh clothes." He turned to the woman who had let me in. "Isabella, I'm going home a bit early, close up for me, would you?"

Freddy's house was close by, every bit as clean as his office, and every bit as expensive as I had expected. Though I had not expected to be met at the door by his wife. She was a handsome lady, though hardly a beautiful one; if she hadn't been in a dress I might have taken her for a man. "Fredrick, who's this?" she asked, looking at me like I was a stray cat with three paws and a stubby tail.

Freddy gave her a smile so forced I worried his lips would tear from the tension. "This is my brother John. Er, John, Juliana. Juliana, John."

"Charmed," I said, but she didn't extend her hand to me. Perhaps she was afraid I'd bite it off.

Being subjected to a bath was tolerable, though a bit frightening; that sort of thing just isn't healthy. And though Freddy's clothes were a bit large on me, they were no hardship. Taking my earrings and beads out was disheartening, but I could live with it. But then came the part that would strike terror into the heart of the fiercest pirate. I had braved storms at sea, I had fought armed men with my bare hands, I had endured lashings and beatings and battles without flinching, but I cowered from this. Freddy wanted to take me to the barber.

"But Freddy!" I wailed. "It took me _years_ to grow this hair. I'm terribly proud of it. You wouldn't let my life's work go to waste, would you?"

He just looked at me. "Your life's work has been... growing hair?"

"The beard. At least leave me the beard."

"Johnny dear, you look like a billygoat."

I was pleading now. "The moustache. You can even have it trimmed if you like. Please, don't take _everything_ from me!"

"_John_," he said in a low voice, and suddenly I was eight years old and he had me by the scruff of the neck, and I was afraid that he would whack me across the bum if I protested any further.

So he dragged me to the barber, and I whimpered helplessly as I was shorn like a sheep. Afterwards, the barber gave me a glass to inspect his work in, and I recoiled in horror. I looked ridiculous.

But even after I'd survived that ordeal, two more trials remained. First, I had to recover my pistol. They'd likely be auctioning it off, and I needed to track it down if I was to have my revenge on the man whose treachery had led me to all these torments. Right now, I could do nothing, because I still had to face down the other trial. Mother.


End file.
